A Freelance Single Mom's Survival Guide

If you're new to working from home with kids and wondering how to achieve balance this summer: Don't worry. 

What I mean is don't worry about feeling sane. Saddle up. Here's a day in the life. 

If they're little, the tantrums won't care about your 11 a.m. Zoom or your urgent deadline. If they're older, the refusal to accept boundaries will render you incapable of composing a coherent thought. You'll find yourself typing sentences like this: "Dear XX, attached is the first draft when I asked you nicely five times so that's why I'm yelling now." 

They'll need meals and drinks every 30 minutes. Not healthy foods, the GOOD STUFF. You know, the kind that comes in brightly colored packages and is sure to cause hyperactivity, diabetes, high cholesterol, and maybe a third nipple. Anything homemade is gross and stupid, if not boring and a butthole. If you ask them to sit at the table and eat, they'll collapse in agony. If you let them sit in front of the TV, their food will travel far away from their wingspan all over your freshly vacuumed floor (accidentally, for spite).

They'll need a snack about five minutes after a meal and every 10 minutes thereafter. Only sugary things are acceptable, and the word "no" is like administering electric shock. If you choose to shock them, you'll need to add extra time for revival. It will involve bribery. 

The arrival of nap time will elicit Exorcist-like convulsions, and the removal of devices will cause blank stares and drooling due to lack of digital dopamine. During nap time, you'll finally get to exha...oh hey, you forgot to pick up Kid 1's pink eye meds! Only a pap smear could be more fun than waking a sleeping child and dragging two of them to the grocery store. It's also time to schedule well checks at the pediatrician. Better get a leg up on planning that birthday party too, so you'll have ample time to stalk strangers on social media to get around the school's requirement to send invitations to every classmate. It's high time you fix that drip in the shower, clean that stained hoodie, order a new vacuum since your last one lost a battle with a surreptitious dog turd, and a bunch of other To Dos that every good mom does during "me time." 

Amidst Enjoying Every Minute of It (or else you're a bad, ungrateful mom), don't forget self care! Don't skip meals except for the ones you don't have time to eat. Forego sleep so you can keep up with work. We all know that moms can survive on, like, one hour of sleep because as long as we're upright, we're okay. 

If you'd like to exercise to allay your stress, you're in luck—it's allowed. As long as you can fit it into a schedule as unforgiving as your pre-pregnancy jeans. Make sure to hurry up with it, because time flies when you've spent three-fourths of the day fending off fits and interruptions and now it's time to cook dinner. 

You'll feel your soul leave your body somewhere between the 1st and 10th time you ask one somebody to stop saying "muh balls" and the other somebody to turn off his engine because Yes, buddy, it's so cool that you're a giant, Giant, GIANT T-REXMOBILE, but let's just be humans at the dinner table. 

Next comes Quality Time, where you'll "play" with your children who are now Lord of the Flies-level rational. While keeping them from murdering each other, you'll attempt to fold one of the four loads of laundry you've been meaning to get to were it not for all those times you ran to your laptop to finish that article you had to leave unfinished earlier. Speaking of work, if you need more clients, don't worry—your pals on LinkedIn are ready with advice that's as useful as Mike Pence during a national crisis. Seriously, though, you should "embrace that downtime" between clients; there's nothing more calming than kicking back on a fluffy pile of unpaid bills. 

When bedtime arrives, you'll spend 45 minutes taming a two-person, underage frat party in the bedroom next to yours, just in time to jack up your cortisol levels so that restful slumber is as unattainable as nipples that don't hang at half-mast after two cycles of breastfeeding.  

Welcome to your new normal.